People found it a great blessing to be able to send quick news, and Samuel Morse was soon called the greatest benefactor of the age. The man who had lived in one room and who had gone for two days at a time without food received so many invitations to banquets that he could not go to half of them. The ten powers of Europe held a special congress and sent the inventor eighty thousand dollars for a gift. The Sultan of Turkey, the King of Prussia, the Queen of Spain, the Emperor of the French, the King of Denmark, all sent decorations and presents. The name of Samuel F. B. Morse was on every lip. But all this success did not spoil him one bit. He was the same modest, lovable man he had always been. Very few Americans have had so much honor paid to them as he. When he was an old man, the telegraph people all over the world wanted to show their esteem for him and so erected a statue to his memory in Central Park, New York. An evening reception was held in a large hall, and when Samuel Morse came upon the stage, how the audience rose and cheered! He was led to a table on which had been placed the first telegraph register ever used. In some clever way this had been joined to every telegraph wire in America and to those in foreign lands. Mr. Morse put his fingers on the keys, and after thanking his friends for their gift, spelled out, with his own dots and dashes, his farewell greeting; it was this--Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men! When Jedediah Morse wrote his geographies of the United States, he little thought the small boy Samuel, who tried so hard not to disturb him, would one day bind all the countries on the globe together! WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT George Washington was a daring soldier himself and of course noticed how other men behaved on a battlefield. He liked a man who had plenty of courage--a real hero. There was a certain Colonel Prescott who fought at the battle of Bunker Hill whom Washington admired. He always spoke of him as Prescott, the brave. Colonel Prescott had a grandson, William Hickling Prescott, who was never in a battle in his life and did not know the least thing about soldiering, but he deserved the same title his grandfather won--"Prescott, the brave"--as you will see. William was born in Salem, in 1796. His father, a lawyer who afterwards became a famous judge, was a rich man, so William and his younger brothers and sisters had a beautiful home; and as his mother was a laughing, joyous woman, the little Prescotts had a happy childhood. William was much petted by his parents. His mother taught him to read and write, but when he was very small he went to school to a lady who loved her pupils so well that she never allowed people to call her a school-teacher--she said she was a school-_mother_. Between his pleasant study hours with Miss Higginson, this school-mother, and his merry play hours at home, the days were never quite long enough for William.